Military Vietnam

Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

The true story of Lieutenant Steve Joyner, who carried all the traits of a "perfect Marine" - character, compassion, determination, patriotism . . . an All-American football star. But then came the harsh and unforgiving realities of combat in Vietnam. How the two worlds he inhabited both connected and conflicted reveals the character of an extraordinary man gone far too soon. "Promise Lost is a touching, crisply rendered account of a Marine lieutenant who fell heroically in the final, bloody days of the 1968 battle for Khe Sanh while leading a counterattack into the teeth of an overwhelming...

Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti - war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefi eld, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.

A Yale graduate who volunteered to serve his country, Larry Gwin was only 23 years old when he arrived in Vietnam in 1965. After a brief stint in the Delta, Gwin was reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in An Khe. There, in the hotly contested Central Highlands, he served almost nine months as executive officer for Alpha Company, 2/7, fighting against crack NVA troops in some of the war's most horrific battles.

How far will an American sniper go to save the lives of his fellow soldiers? Is there a line he will not cross? CIA officer Rene Granier heads up a covert team of specialists out to hunt down and annihilate the very heart of the Viet Cong. Will their merciless tactics shorten the war? Will it be worth the price? In 1966, the Vietnam War rages with no end in sight. The Americans try everything in their power to stop the flow of arms to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces in the south, but nothing works. The generals at the Pentagon underestimated their enemy and the army of dedicated ...

As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed 9,000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching 50,000, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society.

By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.

33 Quebec was his radio call sign. Even with two years of training, he was still green Infantry Lieutenant on his first combat tour in Vietnam. 33 Tango was a Sergeant First Class (E7) with nineteen and one half years of service. He was halfway through his third tour in Vietnam. He would leave Vietnam and retire from the Army at the same time. As part of the five man Mobile Advisory Team (MAT) 111, they formed a two-man unit operating as advisors to the local Regional Force soldiers in the jungles and hamlets of Phuoc Long Province along the Cambodian border during the part of the war know ...

This is a US Army helicopter pilot's candid, firsthand account of his Vietnam experience in the air and on the ground at the height of US troop strength and then again when he returned for a second tour of duty at the very end of the war. It is a nonpolitical description of what life was really like for him and others who served in Vietnam. There is no embellishment or any secondhand stories from anyone else about their experiences in Vietnam.

Marine Lance Corporal Jack Swan crested the face of a bare, rocky knoll in the Que Son Valley of South Vietnam. Following Swan were the 164 Marines of Mike Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division. Their mission was to locate and rescue two understrength and isolated companies of felow Marines who were under attack by the North Vietnamese Army.

JFK is losing the war before it even starts. Something has to be done…The South Vietnamese are turning against their own government. Protests are daily events. Even the military is questioning its orders to put down the civilian demonstrations. With the ever-increasing rise of violent factions, it seems Diem is the only leader that can hold South Vietnam together. But even he goes too far when he attacks the temples and imprisons the Buddhist monks and their followers. Saigon is about to explode. The Viet Cong take advantage of the chaos seizing more territory and villages. Their ranks ...

Vietnam, 1969. A female defector reaches South Vietnam with startling news. Major Nguyen Mai-Lan, a senior officer of the ‘People’s Army of Vietnam,’ has witnessed scores of American prisoners, listed as MIAs, being held in a remote area in the far northwest of the country. An old battlefield known as Dien Bien Phu. MACV reacts with disbelief. Some senior officers believe she must be lying. They call for her execution as a spy. Others are more cautious and decide to send a small unit into North Vietnam to check out her story. Newly promoted Master Sergeant Rick Heller gets the short ...

Without doubt the most unique U.S. unit to participate in the Vietnam War, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG) was a highly-classified, U.S. joint-service organization consisting of Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Marine Force Reconnaissance units, the Air Force, and the CIA. Committed to action in Southeast Asia even before the major U.S. build-up in 1965, it also fielded a division-sized element of South Vietnamese military personnel, indigenous Montagnards, ethnic Chinese Nungs, and Taiwanese pilots.

SOMETIMES THE PAST REFUSES TO DIE... U.S. Navy helicopter pilot Bud Lammers was on the fast track to promotion when a botched raid in Vietnam tainted his career and threw his marriage into a tailspin. Now, a decade after the war, he and his men are on the verge of wrapping up a successful peacetime mission, or so they think. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos have entrenched themselves as President and First Lady of the Philippines. The charismatic couple has vowed to bring peace and prosperity to a country that's labored nearly four hundred years under the yoke of colonial rule. But there’s ...

Every Weapon I Had is an inspiring tale of valor and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of major escalations in both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. It is also a story of deferred honor and delayed recognition; Davis earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions, but his nomination for the Congressional Medal of Honor was repeatedly “lost.” No official reason has ever been given for this oversight, but those who fought to correct it believe that it was motivated by racial prejudice. Davis was finally awarded the Medal in 2023, 58 years after the battle.

This is part two of a series of true stories about a young helicopter pilot's tour of duty in Vietnam.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the US in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

Chief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. One of the first to come out of the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was an initial member—a "plank owner"—of America's deadliest and most elite fighting force, the U.S. Navy SEALs. Through three tours in the jungle hell of Vietnam, he walked the point—staying alert to trip wires, booby traps, and punji pits, guiding his squad of amphibious fighters on missions of rescue, reconnaissance, and demolition—confronting a war's unique terrors head-on, unprotected . . . and unafraid.

They will never be able to duplicate the 5th Special Forces Recondo School and the training that gave its grads something they desperately needed - the skills to survive Long Range Patrol missions in the jungle that NVA considered its own. Vietman veteran Larry Chambers vividly describes the grit and courage it took to pass the tough volunteer-only training program in Nha Trang and the harrowing graduation mission to scout out, locate, and out-guerrilla the NVA.

As the American military continues its withdrawal from Vietnam, the CIA steps up its covert operations and training of Cambodian troops. New weapons are developed to stop the communists. With its powerful cannons, the Spectre gunship proves to be a deadly force capable of destroying any weapon or vehicle the communists can field and ensures that reinforced bunkers are no longer a safe haven. Realizing the survival of their country will soon be in their hands, ARVN troops attack the NVA and Viet Cong all over South Vietnam with surprisingly good results. It seems there is hope. When ...